The present disclosure relates to locomotives, specifically the use of an equipped tender which serves to decrease fuel consumption or increase power and control emissions of one or two attached locomotives.
Impending circumstances will financially challenge the US railroad industry. Specifically, the continued reliance on high-cost diesel fuel and the implementation of stricter emission controls are conditions that the railroads and locomotive manufacturers are currently ill-equipped to manage with current system architecture.
Transportation by rail forms the basis for inter-city freight in the US, holding more than 40% of this market. One of the reasons for this is that rail transport is more fuel efficient and less expensive than other land-based sources of transport. The amount of freight being handled (measured in revenue ton-miles) continues to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of more than 5%.
Railroads are significant contributors to air pollution. According to the EPA, locomotives emit approximately 803,000 tons of NOx, 32,000 tons of particulate matter (PM), and contribute more than 2% of total transportation greenhouse gas emissions. In order to combat air pollution, the EPA promulgated a series of emission control standards, the first of which took effect in 2000. The goal of the standards was focused on greatly reducing NOx emissions along with smaller reductions for PM, CO, and unburned hydrocarbons. In addition to pollution concerns from NOx and PM, CO2 emissions are also coming under increased scrutiny.
The present invention relates to a waste heat recovery system for combustion engines and a method of controlling said waste heat recovery system.
The continued reliance on high-cost diesel hydrocarbon fuel and the implementation of increasingly strict emission controls have had, and will continue to have, a significant impact on our society. These impacts include an increase in the cost of transporting goods (which, in turn, leads to increases in retail prices, i.e., inflation), increased global tensions (as a large fraction of known oil reserves are located in tumultuous regions of the globe), and increased cost of power generating systems, including vehicles, (due to the need to add ever more complex, and costly, exhaust treatment systems).
These impacts have not gone unnoticed and a variety of inventions have been disclosed to address them. For instance, hybrid-electric vehicles are currently gaining in popularity due to the increased mileage they provide. This is achieved by adding a temporary energy storage device, e.g. a battery, to the vehicle and using this device to decouple power production from power consumption, allowing each to operate in its optimal regime.
Another area that has received some focus is the extraction of additional useful energy from the ‘waste’ energy streams discharged from internal combustion engines. Typically, between 55% and 75% of all the heat energy of the fuel consumed in an internal combustion energy is not converted into useful energy and is dissipated to the surrounding environment. Given the magnitude of the energy entrained in these waste heat streams, a means for extracting additional useful energy from internal combustion engines is needed.